A Spokane Mini-Vacation

I had to shoehorn this trip into the schedule between teaching classes, but Sunnie, Robin, and I managed to get away to Spokane for a few days. We took a similar trip last summer and had a lot of fun. That was the trip where I found the BabyLock serger for $13.99 at Value Village. (Retail $400.)

We left Wednesday morning and took the northern route through Libby, Montana into Bonners Ferry, Idaho and down to Coeur d’Alene and Spokane. Along the way, we stopped at a few quilt stores and several thrift stores. My first purchase was this book:

I haven’t taken a good look at it yet but it only cost me a couple of dollars. I’m sure it will have some useful information.

That was it for major thrift store purchases for me. Sometimes you find lots of goodies—or one spectacular one—and sometimes you don’t. The fun is in the hunt.

We spent about an hour at The Quilting Bee on Thursday. (Sunnie is a good sport and doesn’t mind going to fabric stores with us even though she doesn’t sew.) The store had just received this month’s Palette color from Tim Holtz, which was Indigo:

Last month’s color was Blue, so I was a bit confused at first until I figured out they were two separate colorways. In keeping with my habit for this line, I bought two fat quarter bundles. The store was having their anniversary sale this week so we got 20% off our purchases. I also bought a yard of each of these low-volume prints:

The two on the right are Tim Holtz prints. The one at the upper left is 3 Sisters for Moda and the one at the bottom left is from Cathe Holden’s line Sable and Swan. I almost bought the fat quarter bundles for that line, too, because it was so lovely.

I overheard a customer asking one of the store employees if they had any apparel fabrics. I’m really hoping more quilt stores will begin to take up some of the slack in this area. Clearly, people want to sew clothing. The Quilting Bee does carry some rayons and several of the Kaffe shot cottons, but I’d love to see them expand their selection of substrates (and their color choices beyond muddy earth tones).

I am taking another oil painting class next week. Sunnie will be there, but our other friend, Lindalee, is teaching. We had such a good time when we did this last August. I may never take up painting as a serious hobby, but it’s fun to dabble in it here and there. (I told the husband that I needed a hobby to help me relax from my other hobby and he said I should stop turning my hobbies into businesses.) We stopped in at Spokane Art Supply on Thursday afternoon and Sunnie helped me choose a few additional supplies.

The weather on our trip was spectacular, the food was amazing, and our Airbnb was clean and comfortable. I only yelled at a few other drivers on the road 🙄. We’re already making plans for next year’s trip.